The Business Case for Quality: Ending Business as Usual in American Health Care

Examines some of the reasons why establishing a business case for improving health care is so difficult, and considers possible solutions. Includes comments on quality provisions of the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003

Social and Situational Influences on the Performance Rating Process

The effects of social and situational influences on the performance rating process has received relatively little attention by past research, yet merits increased attention. While there has been greater acknowledgment of the role of social and situational factors on rater cognition and evaluation, research has typically proceeded in a piecemeal fashion, isolating on a single influence at a time. This approach fails to recognize that performance rating is a process with multiple social and situational influences that need to be considered simultaneously. In the present study, a model of the performance rating process was tested, employing several social and situational variables that have been infrequently investigated and typically not in conjunction with one another. Results indicated support for the overall model and specific influences within the model. Implications of the results for performance rating research are discussed

The Elusive Criterion of Fit in Employment Interview Decisions

Tbe employment interview has had an interesting history of being both widely condemned by researchers and widely used by practitioners. Little attention in past research has been directed at attempts to explain this apparent incongruity. It is proposed in this paper that part of the explanation may lie in the way researchers have defined the criterion when studying the validity of the interview. Namely, the construct of fit may lead to a reconsideration of the usefulness of the interview in personnel selection decisions. In support of this argument, a conceptual model of the selection process which incorporates fit as a central construct is proposed. Furthermore, fit is conceptualized as not simply a passive process, but rather the outcome of active influence attempts by candidates to manage impressions and meanings. Finally, implications for practice and research on the interview are discussed

Personnel/Human Resources Management: A Political Influence Perspective

It was suggested over ten years ago that new and different perspectives needed to be applied to the Personnel/Human Resources Management field in an effort to (P /HRM) promote theory and research and expand our understanding of the dynamics underlying P/HRM processes. Both theory and research are emerging which characterize important P/HRM decisions and activities substantially influenced by opportunistic behavior of both subordinates and supervisors. The purpose of the present review is to systematically examine the P/HRM field from a political influence perspective, reviewing existing theory and research and discussing future directions

The Scientific Romances of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells: Imperialism disguised as progress in the early days of science fiction

Frequently in their respective oeuvres, Verne and Wells write in a rhetoric of conquest that almost always translates to discovering a more efficient means of taming wild, non-European environments. These goals extend not only to the lands that their protagonists explore, but also to human beings and other life that may populate them. Indeed, the underlying focus—the one that is masked behind the thrill and adventure of both Wells and Verne—is none other than the march of progress as understood by middle-class Europeans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Progress can produce positivistic optimism, and it can also produce existential anxiety. The through-line that links the work of both Verne and Wells is the use of these new or theoretical technologies in order to express these ideologies, whether for valorization or condemnation of European imperialism and colonialism. The fictional men of science who wield these technologies, likewise, serve as an expression of the consequences of what happens when human beings are granted more efficient means of power over their fellow men. The scientific romances of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells serve exclusively as a medium through which to speculate over the linked subjects of progress and empire: to what extent human beings may affect control over the earth and the men who live there, the consequences thereof, and the value of progress as it is foisted upon supposedly primitive societies by the hands of European progressives who claim to know bette

Upward Influence in Organizations: Test of A Model

A causal model of upward influence in organizations was proposed and tested on a sample of staff nurses and their supervisors in a hospital setting. LISREL results demonstrated that the proposed model fit the data well, and reflected a better fit than several alternative models that were estimated. The contributions and limitations of the present study are discussed, in addition to challenges and directions for future research

A resilience measure to guide system design and management

This paper presents a measure of resilience which can guide system design and management. Systems design must incorporate resilience to provide stakeholders with the most appropriate solution for their life-cycle needs. Design of resilient systems demands a measure of the resilience afforded by a system proposal which can be used to compare design proposals. The measurement method should balance the interest in resilience with all other proposal evaluation criteria, and incorporate the effect of the sequence of unknown future events affecting the system. Ideally, the resilience measure should also be useful to guide management decisions re maintenance or upgrade during the system life. This paper presents a method to measure system resilience which can be applied to engineered systems in general, not just a specific class of systems, is threat type agnostic, and does not presuppose any ‘desirable’ outcome allowing a system specific determination of ‘desirable’ outcomes

The Age Context of Performance Evaluation Decisions

Organizational demography contends that demographic characteristics of individuals, examined at individual, dyadic, group, and organizational levels of analysis, exert significant effects on organizational processes. The purpose of this paper was to test the contextual effects created by the interaction of work group age composition and supervisor age on supervisor evaluations of subordinate performance. Two competing models of age demography were tested. The similarity model predicts that supervisors similar in age to the work group they supervise will issue generally higher performance ratings. The dissimilarity model developed in this paper predicts the opposite. Support was indicated for the dissimilarity model. Implications of the results are discussed

Undergraduate students' engagement with systems thinking: results of a survey study

This paper describes the results obtained for the affective engagement of students with systems thinking. In prior work the authors have developed and validated a questionnaire instrument for measuring affective engagement of undergraduate engineering students with systems thinking. This paper presents results obtained when the questionnaire was used with undergraduate students. Two surveys with different versions of the questionnaire, one using positive grammar questions only and the other using a mix of positive and negative constructs, were used to measure the students’ engagement with systems thinking and its relationship with gender, age and work experience. Each questionnaire version was applied to a different sample, the first, 186 participants, completed the positive grammar version, and, the second group of 163 completed the mixed version. The results show that participants in both studies valued systems thinking in each of the three dimensions of the systems thinking construct. Statistical tests confirmed no significant gender differences in either study. Student engagement with the practical dimension of systems thinking was shown to vary, with statistical significance, with groups of age, years of work experience and country of the university

Systems thinking in systems engineering

Systems thinking (ST) offers a holistic approach rather than a reductionist approach, through appreciating all the interrelated dimensions of complex problems. It is important for understanding and interacting with all kinds of systems, in order to manage complex problems. However, the broad range of the ST‐related literature found in various disciplines, generates a great deal of disagreement about definitions and understanding of systems thinking. Despite the current ambiguities of ST definitions, its underlying philosophy has a long history. This paper aims to clarify what ST is in the modern day and why it is defined in so many different ways. It identifies a number of interpretations of systems thinking with the purpose of clarifying what it is and why it is variously understood. The main aims of this paper is to propose a new ST construct, and to define its role in the practice of Systems Engineering (SE). This paper then draws implications of the new ST construct for SE education